 Hi there. I'm Rob. I'm coming from the University of Leeds today. Unfortunately, my two other co-presenters could not be here. So that would have been Joanna Brown, who is a senior learning technologist, and Christopher Hassell, who is our academic deal, which is the Digital Education Academic Lead. So just a little bit about me. I've been a learning tech for roughly about seven years now, before my time at University of Leeds. I worked in FE with HE Provisions. So that was both at Barnford College and Bishop Burton College. And I've kind of been looking at XR for probably since the start of that. Back when we had the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, when you needed a big supercomputer to run a VR workshop, and it's great to see the progressions that have been made alongside that, as well as using tech such as the Google Cardboards. So this is going to be a presentation really on the journey of our use of XR in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at University of Leeds, very much in the infancy of that at this stage. So there will kind of be some updates on projects, kind of where did we start this journey from. And then hopefully you guys will have some questions at the end. There can be questions related to Faculty of Biological Sciences or just XR in general, that I've experienced over the last few years. So where did we start? We started by borrowing some headsets. So we needed some headsets in the FPS faculties. We didn't have any ourselves. So what we did is we went to our Centre for Immersive Tech at the University and they had some class of VR headsets that we used in other projects that won't be used at the moment. So what we did is we borrowed four of these headsets to trial within our labs in the FPS. So what we wanted to do is use these alongside microscopes and kind of see that kind of content through VR and kind of bring a new dynamic to that. Now, unfortunately with this, I'm not sure if any of you used class of VR before or any kind of red box VR like this. It needs to be on its own private network. Now, as you're all probably aware, IT not really great at giving you a private network or the ability to set something like this up fairly easy without going through the correct protocols, which it doesn't make sense. It's just very frustrating from a technologist point of view, trying to use this technology, but, yeah, from a security side, you wouldn't be able to use these on edge of your own, for example. It's a bit like using airplane and your TV and your Wi-Fi and it needs to all connect through one location. So if there were multiple people using class of VR across the university, they would all kind of interlink and get stuck together. So class of VR are used to dealing with schools. So that's how their kind of main target audience is schools. So they've kind of got an easier IT system to do that. But thankfully for us, our business school were also going down the similar path that we were going. So it was enabled us to kind of push forward our private network agenda, as you say, with IT to try and get this sorted as quickly as possible. So in terms of that quickly as possible, a few months later, a solution was found in the process. So the second part of our journey was the university open day. So like I said there, it took a couple of months, but we got the system set up. We were able to use these with our kind of university open day. So again, we took four class VR headsets. And what we showed there were 3D models of anatomy, birds and insects. And we also did some kind of 360 imagery and 360 videos. So one of them was swimming with turtles under water, for example. And what that did is it got parents and students really kind of interested and excited in this technology and the opportunity that that could bring. So we kind of got the buying from the students and the parents. But the hidden benefit that we got of this is that during the downtime in the open day, staff and academics were interested and wanted to come and have a go. So when they came, they also thought, oh, this would be great for my area. I could do X, Y and Z. So they were the ones that came forward with ideas for using kind of XR within their teaching a few months later. So whilst it was great to test these kind of four class VR headsets on a scalability side, four headsets is not going to be enough to facilitate a full class experience of XR or a full class experience of a virtual reality scenario. So in order for us to kind of move forward on its own, we had to get buying from across the board to kind of invest in some more equipment and then luckily for us and luckily for the university in general, the digital transformation that leads funded the Helix Centre to be built. So the Helix is the new digital learning space for students, staff and the local community. It's not just for us as staff and students at the University of Leeds. It's for everybody in the community of this space. It's bookable. It's there for conferences. It's there to be used by all. It's the culmination of years of planning around digital investment for students and it's increased digital provision for their learning. Not only is the Helix a hub of learning, but it's like a mix of multi-purpose spaces for events and conferences, team building network activities and public engagement featuring immersive technologies, maker and prototype and equipment. So you know, 3D scanners, 3D printing, the make space has technology Lego. So you can come up with these creative kind of Lego building lessons and it's got cutting edge multimedia production studios as well. So what this has got is it's got a bookable XR classroom, so which is a quite a large space really. So you could facilitate a 30 to 50 size class if possible with all having headsets on. There's enough enough space in there to do that. And this innovation space houses our cross faculty institute as well. So the center of immersive technologies. It comes with state of the art equipment. So we put ours in for, you know, the latest meta quest, the latest equipment that's out there. And it's also got a omnidirectional treadmill. So it's basically a big circle where it's got these kind of role of type situation going. So you can actually walk on the platform. It will walk you in the VR experience. And I believe that's one of the only ones in the UK. So it's great to have this kind of cutting edge technology. And again, we've been there. We've got professional grade studios. So for filming staff lectures, for example, or if you wanted to film content of guides for using equipment or kind of anything along them lines. We've got these studios and the self recording studios as well. So if lecturers want to go in and record themselves to input into their lectures, they've got these nice spaces where they're nice and quiet. They've got a really good setup of a camera and microphone. And it gives them ability to do that as well as like podcasting setups. With a couple of microphones in there and students can book these out as well if students wanted to create podcasts and self recording studios. And then within this space, we've got book rooms from Enterprise and also there's just professionals there who were there to give support to teachers, staff, students, any externals that are there. They've always got that expert to tap into within the centre. So we had the space now. And what we found out was that there was kind of silos of people across the university talking to each other about XR and the possibilities of what they could do with this space, the possibilities of what they could do with their area in XR by seeing other people's work. And we thought, well, this isn't going to work if everybody's just talking amongst themselves and keeping any ideas to themselves. So what we did is we created a university-wide XR Microsoft team and anybody who was involved or interested in creating projects or wanting help with their projects. And even if they just wanted to get a bit of inspiration and have discussions, they could join this team, they could ask questions, they could see what other people are doing. So it was great to kind of get that set up and get everybody involved as well. And that also helped spark innovation in other staff members by them having an area where they could go and see what's being done by other people across the university. So it's not just us as a university who are talking about XR. It's the world, really, who are talking about XR and in terms of, for us in education, JISC have created their XR community which we recently joined and we even hosted the meet-up in our new Helix Centre recently where we had presentations similar to the one that I'm doing now. We had presentations from people within colleges, within universities. And it's really interesting because when these people get together, everybody is at such a different point in their journey of XR. I spoke to a few people at this event who some had not even began looking at it. They were there to see what other people had been doing and getting their ball rolling. And you had people with fully fledged immersive environments that they were sharing as part of their presentation. Yes, so JISC kind of describes this XR community as it's being developed to help further education and skills and higher education members across the UK to work collaboratively sharing knowledge and best practice around augmented mixed and virtual reality. So this is also facilitated by ALT as well. So it's not just the JISC thing, it's facilitated by ALT. So I'd imagine you guys will hear about it more and the more and more popular it gets, it'll be kind of great to share what people have been doing in terms of XR. So it's open to members from FE and HG organisation and it's with an interest in extended reality including educators, digital managers, learning technologists, IT staff, library staff and researchers also. There's a whole host of people that you can tap into for knowledge and again there's a mailing list for this as well as a Microsoft team. So whilst we've got the University of Leeds team, we've also got a wider community in this JISC XR community where you can again share your practice, tap into knowledge, ask for help. So that's being really positive for us. So some of the projects that we've been working on. So we put a call out for those interested in developing some pilot projects in our faculty and we had five suggestions. So we had insect taxonomy which I'm going to talk about a bit more in depth in the next few slides. So we had a couple of kind of 360 VR tour experiences but they're not just tours, they're also educational tools. So we have the National Pig Centre for Research at the University of Leeds. So the journey of a pig's life and the housing that they're in which feeds are for which pigs, which feeds are doing what jobs. But it was also a tour of the facility for those who can't go out of the facility because it's off-site and it's not necessarily a place where you would keep going to constantly. You would only go once maybe in your time at the university. So it's good to go to get your pre-knowledge before going but then also to use that as a revision tool after. We've also got lab tours for 360 again. These are tours but also the one that we're doing at the moment in a mass spectrometer lab is it's kind of laid information. So on the outside, you would do a tour of the lab and you would get basic information about these machines that are there. However, the academic then wanted further information for those who were maybe doing postgraduate work and wanted more in-depth talk-throughs and knowledge and manuals and these machinery and you could do that by going down in layers. So it's a resource that's available for a wide variety of students. And then there's a couple of ideas that have not been kind of explored yet but also ideas that are there ready to go when possible. So one of them is also simulations. So sports science, for example, a sports science simulation that we've been suggested in talking to about an academic is the idea of a sports injury on a football pitch and you've got to react to that scenario, run onto the pitch and kind of go through the process of what you would do there. That's not something you could easily just set up and do whenever. However, the XR experience would allow that to happen. So virtual reality, you've got to come up with some kind of gimmicky name to draw people in when we talk about this at stands. So virtual reality is Chris who's unfortunately not here. He's doing the insect taxonomy project. So these are just a few slides from when he does his presented on the taxonomy. So visual aids have had a long history in entomology. Again, I'm not a subject matter expert in insect taxonomy. So if you've got any questions regarding insects, I'm not the person, I'll pass you crazy emails. But apparently in 13,000 BC, that's when the first rock depicted bees in paintings and then carved amulets of beetles and there's just been imagery of bugs and other history. So traditional teaching methods have limitations. So specimens can be quite hard to come by. There's limited access to specimens in the topic according to Chris. And live insects are hard to study. I mean, that's just a thing on its own. You won't like to study a wasp if it were alive. And then limitations of books and illustrations. Now, I do think this is an extreme example of a limitation of a lady bird. However, there is still limitations even in detailed illustrations within books. There's still some limitations there. So again, access to specimens that would be quite difficult to kind of get hold of are also a lot easier by using 3D models. It's interactive and engaging learning experiences. And then it's safe and effective alternative to destructive sampling. So you're not killing bugs for the sake of just seeing them when you can also use 3D models. So 3D scans are a kind of rich teaching resources. So this is actually a 3D model that you're looking at. I could pick and move that around. But what this means is it brings a new dynamic to the content being viewed. The more interaction that you have with the model may help with returning that information of what you're studying and what you're learning about. And then you could tailor that information to how you please. So 3D environments are teaching environments. So asynchronous materials in class demonstrations and shared learning environments. So learners can view an environment at their own pace and explore a rate that helps them learn that information the best. Alternatively, headsets like class VR, you can also do guided VR experiences where you can tell the students where to look at and you can move them along at a pace that you want to, but there's that opportunity there to kind of do both. So here's just a little video of Chris's project. So he uses Sketchfab and Gravity Sketch for this. So Sketchfab is an online tool where you can get 3D models. You can buy them, you can get them for free. So I know that the ones that Chris is using here, all these were free. It just downloaded these and populated them into Gravity Sketch and built an educational tool with that. So Gravity Sketch is a 3D platform where you can create, collaborate and review. So it's a bit like a big drawing board in there so you can get your controller and draw around things. So if he was to teach a lesson on one of these insects so he could cast this headset on the board, enhance these bugs and then begin drawing and annotating around these bugs while seizing the VR space, but also with Gravity Sketch, you can see outside of the headset if you've got an augmented one as well. So you can see what your class is doing whilst you're in that headset. So summary of the virtual reality is it's reversing a decline of interest in a skill and skills in a neglected subject. So Chris talks about how insect taxonomy will become in a subject that students just weren't really bothered for or interested for in his hoping that these kind of experiences can spark new life into that. Initial pilots using off the shelf softwares and all we are. So this project that is put together, he had access to a headset. Obviously a bit of an academic deal. He is very into this kind of thing so he's got his own headset but he was able to build this project for free essentially if you had access to one of these headsets you could build. It's a completely free experience that's been built. You don't need to get in any extra stuff. You might buy some models of insects that might be more suited to what you need but it's off the shelf. It were kind of free to make. The digital models are proliferating which is basically a fancy way to say there's lots of models being put on at a good rate. The potential benefits that Chris sees is the active learning, increased engagement, digital skills development and reduced environmental impacts. Obviously you get that active learning through the use of your hands and movement to navigate that space. Skills like using new and different software help with that digital upskilling. Learning is for us in FBS what I've been learning so far. The academics are excited by the prospects of what XR technology can bring to their teaching with support needed from us as learning technologists to give our technical know-how as well as our pedagogical input as to how they could create an experience. Academics might struggle to see how XR could be relevant to their area but sometimes it just takes a quick discussion of what they're actually doing within their topics for you then to be able to give an educated example of where it could be used. In the past when I've had English staff come to me and go, how can we use VR in English? You could use it for creative writing if you used a 360 image of an area as opposed to an image on a sheet you're tapping into your students of a senses and then that can create a whole new dynamic to a piece of creative writing. It's just something like that to spark innovation in staff to help them see the benefits of this. Collaboration is key so they just get to our community they're working with other staff across the university that's been key for us and then communications integral you'll find that if you're working within groups of staff that are trying to achieve one project of XR there might be creative differences there might be staff wanting to go on a different purpose as to where that XR should lead to so you kind of need to keep them all on the initial track of what the outcomes and the aims of the project is especially with XR it really needs to be purposeful you really need to get your staff excited for it but also in a way that still can be seen as quite gimmicky so it needs to be really purposeful and not just creating an XR project for the sake of creating one just because it's cool it really needs to be purposeful for it to be for its longevity but it's obviously not all there been swings around about so some of the barriers and challenges so onboarding onboarding is a very kind of difficult process especially when you're using hardware such as say the MetaQuest 2 which requires all students to have their own account they have to log into the device as soon as they come into the classroom and if just by any chance there's an update on that headset it will do it there and then what as soon as you're logged in you can't pre-update them now I don't know whether that's still the same case however you might need to run pre-lesson account setups you might need to get students into your room to get set up before you kind of go ahead with it accessibility so being aware of the content can you also add audio in there can you add text where using software at the moment that we've got a site license for is Finglink so you might be aware of that for other e-learning use but we use it for virtual reality and that taps in that's got integrated with Microsoft immersive reader so you know this accessibility available there and then the scalability so room size so yes whilst we've got the helix for those booking the room so if there's four members of staff who want to run a big session it's not possible if they want to do it at the same time so it's about kind of having that continuity plan and making most of the space that you've got for that so our next steps is to kind of continue with our projects insect tax omnis currently being trial with students and the pig centre and the lab tours are currently underway with photos have been taken exported the current camera that we're using for that is a insta 1x2 so it's not the latest camera but it's a good camera and it provides high quality photos and then kind of looking at the gysgex community and overall collaboration opportunities to further our knowledge as well as share our projects so that's kind of an overview of our journey I'm aware there might be a lot more questions and time there's left for I'm going to be here today I'm tomorrow if you want to cut me my email address there as well also that link at the bottom is more information about the gysgex community and how you could potentially join that so again if you've got an interesting XR and you want to kind of look further into that and be a part of this group if possible if you go to the gysgex community UK site there's more information on there but yeah is there any questions? It's sort of a bit accessible accessibility question but in regards to motion sickness do you find that any of your teaching or anything you've tried has suffered as a result of motion sickness and what would you do? Everyone's going to have a different reaction to virtual reality and the biggest problem with the motion sickness comes from it's the 360 degree experiences because if you're moving your body or your head that's not on a swivel your brain can't comprehend that you're moving forward whilst that image is not moving so that's where most of the sickness comes in so it's tailoring our sessions where if it is 360 you can sit down and be in one central location and then move your head to prevent that and then in terms of the more immersed experiences ways to kind of combat that I mean I personally don't know in the past is when I've got the headset on I kind of leave a little gap at the bottom so that if I need to ground myself and look at the floor I can do but everybody's got a different reaction there's no one answer that I could give some people can last one minute in it some people can last five hours yeah let's do one more last question or we have a break yeah I wanted to know about how do you support academics in terms of fundings because all those I don't know you have a dedicated team that can do XR or how do you redirect to academics who come to see you says I want to do this project and this project it's costly tax time to do those things do you have a place so in terms of funding it completely depends on the actual project itself so a lot of the projects were at the moment a 360 kind of VR experiences which we facilitate as a learning technology team so across the university we've just had, well I'll say we've just last year we had a big funding towards digital so there is learning technology, senior learning technology, assistant learning technologies that spread out all across to dedicated departments hence why I'm part of the faculty of biological sciences so somebody in my department who has supported our experience we would as the technology team create that the kind of issue comes when it's say a fully immersive environment so you know we can pick things up and it's part of say the quest where it's a fully built environment so currently for that we're working with our kind of production team and tapping into knowledge and skills across the university to come together for these projects and kind of down the line and as the helix centre picks up we might fund a dedicated member of staff who can build environments so in terms of funding at the moment it's very much in-house and we're working with what we've got and if the excitement picks up and it gets used a lot across the university there might be more funding that goes into dedicated staff to do that but yeah we're tapping into what we've got at the moment and the experiences that we can tailor for it I'm not going to say simple because it's not simple but there is enough for us as learning text to complete so a finger link for example it's pretty much taking 360 imagery and jigsaw in it into there and then kind of dragging and dropping gaze points and information points and things on there so yeah that's where you don't want to build connection with metal or Google to help you too so this is where we hope that the community is coming to play and we find out more about what other people are doing in terms of those partnerships so like I say we're very much at the university leasing our infancy of XR so they are avenues that we probably will go down as soon as it's more buying for XR across and the helix gets up and away running so helix is fully opening I believe this September so it's not even fully open for bookable yet so as soon as that gets going we hope that the buying will mean more investment takes place Thanks all, you've all earned a break and our two presenters are happy to take more questions on the side, thanks I'm happy to spit that on very very much thank you